30 Poems in 30 Days 2009: Day Fifteen
September 15, 2009 by John Hewitt
Tanka is a Japanese form. The word Tanka actually means “short poem”. Tankas are meditations on emotional issues such as love, melancholy, the passing of the seasons and the transitory nature of life. Thematically, a Tanka is different than a Haiku in that it acceptable to use traditional poetic devices such as metaphor and personification.
A Tanka is five lines long. Syllable counts for the lines are not fixed in stone, despite some claims to the contrary. The Japanese traditionally write Tanka as a single line of poetry, so syllable counts per line is an English language imposition and should be viewed as a guideline only. The syllable counts are:
Very short (5 syllables)
Short (7 syllables)
Very short (5 syllables)
Short (7 syllables)
Short (7 syllables)
Thematically, the first three lines are used to create one image or theme, while the final two lines are used to create a second image that reflects on the first. Some poets reverse this, using the first two lines for the first image and the last three for the reflection. While the topic of a Tanka often has a melancholy feel, it is best to avoid overt sentimentality.
Today’s Poetry Prompt
Write a Tanka. Feel free to write more than one if you like.
September
Orange light chases
Shadows across the canyon
As the sun proceeds
It is just another page
I will turn on my calendar
Grill
I smell the steak transform
As the smoke wraps around it and
Spreads across the yard
I am anxious to eat it
But then what will I have
Related links
- 30 Poems in 30 Days (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: Why you should write poetry (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: Writing About Yourself (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: Writing About Issues (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: Poetry of Place (1.000)
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Well, I host Tanka on Tuesday at MySpace – an attempt to teach myself how to write them and at the same time have fun playing with other people who are doing likewise. My latest, written indeed on Tuesday 15th, is:
in September sun
as new leaves and buds glisten
my friend telephones
her dying father’s lucid
they have had a lovely day
PS In something I read somewhere, it was suggested that the middle line can be a pivot, taking the reader from one image to another by being applicable to both. Which is what I attempted above.
A pandemonium
Of disorder and chaos
A fitting abode
For a fiasco of a joke
With little understanding
A fitting devilish hell
For someone who is a jerk
And deserves no less
But a messy universe
To live in eternity.
@all: I appologize for the length, but are few words on the forms before my poem:
The Oriental Forms, Tanka and Haiku being some, are better in their native languages…this comes from the different ways in which writing is imbued with meaning between our cultures and writing mechanisms.
In the western/Greek/Latin mechanism, pheonetic sounds are tied to each character, and these are strung together to sound out a word of specific or known meaning. With some languages this is more precise than others, largely because the stabilization of some languages was not completed when the freezing of the status quo occured with the invention of the printing press. Nevertheless, the mechanism is fairly consistant between the western languages and fairly straight forward. Using this mechanism, homonyms (words of different meanings or even entymology that sound the same) are present but not incredibly common. Greater meaning is generally accomplished by adding more syllables. Ever consider the prime example of this with the lengthening of German nouns? The proess of connecting letters to sounds and sounding out words, to allow for the proper coding of speach or decodeing of writing, is what children must learn to become literate in such a mechanism. Once they do this, they start internallizing the coded words by sight and translation between speech and writing speeds up.
In the eastern/Chinese mechanism, characters are created by combining a moderate set of radicals. These are evolved picturgraphs, which bear meaning. A character may have multiple radicals. Additionally, a character may be a complex character, combining up to 4 other characters, each radical and each character lending meaning to the final character. Of these, one is selected to be the dominant, or spoken character. This perhaps becuase the spoken sound was already commonly used. In short, the written chinese or oriental language, can carry nuanced meaning wihtin the space on one character, which is spoklen as one syllable. Sometimes, two such characters are paired together to make a 2 syllable word of very precise meaning. Seldom are more syllables needed. In this system, hommonyms are very common, and a heavy reliance on context is needed to understand the spoken word. The process of attaining literacy involves then the connection of characters with their meanings to known speahc patterns.
Before the more western minded individuals rush to judgement, consider the research results that often go around the internet as a garbled, but readable note, stating that the human mind recognizes the words even if the letters are not in the correct order. The claim is that we read words by sight, not by actually sounding them out. We may sound out new words until the pattern becomes fixed in the mind, but the mind largly grasps the entire word at one go, and the meaning if fomred in an instant. The oriental system actually uses this more efficently. The western languages will spell out hundreds of thousands of words, only about 10 to 20 thousand of which a person may pick up by sight, if they are well educated. The other words require more concentrated effort. In the oriental system, a person who can readily recognize 2500 characters is functionally literate, and highly literate will recognize 30,000 or more. It is estimated that in the chinese language there exists over 100,000 characters. While we alphabatize our dictionaries, they order theirs based upon the radicals, both count and rder. Which system is better?
Understanding these things and taking them into consideration when examining the oriental forms of poetry, the odd syllable count of the haiku or tanka begin to take on a different meaning. Poetry in the oriental form, is as much a visual form as a spoken form. The Tanka, will not only have 5 syllables on the first line, but it will have 5 characters on the first line, each drawn at the same size, according to the standard writing mechanism. The second and fourth lines will seven charaters and be 40% longer than the shorter lines, the third, and fifth exaclty the length of the first line. Recall that traditionall oriental writing is in collumns from right to left. Arranging the characters accordingly, produces a visual image readily recognizable, and resembling curtains. But this is siply the visual aspect. Take into not the fact that the nuanced meaning capable by the 5 character in the first line far out-paces what the western system can pack into same 5 syllables. Hence the true beauty of oriental poetry. The tanka form has 29 syllables, which in the oriental writing translates to 29 characters with nuanced meanings. This would be like 29 well chosen complex words, which in our system would take more than 29 syllables.
To even hint at this, the western writer would be forced to limit himself or herself to one or two syllable words. But doing this in the western system, leaves the reader with a sense of simplicity, almost childishness, ehich does not happen in the oriental system. This is why good Tanka and Haiku are so difficult for the western writer.
All this said, here is my attempt, I hope it does justice to a very beautiful form of poetry.
Seagulls glide on wind
and tiny suns dance on waves
while daylight dawdles.
A deep breath: the pained soul cleansed
as cares wash to sea.
James,
Thank you for the excellent discussion! You are quite right. To me an American attempt at a Tanka is really just an interpretation of the original form and is not meant to fully capture the original. In the end it is its own beast.
I tried several, ended up with two versions of the same idea because the first one didn’t fit the syllable guide, I skipped a line by accident.
Dark branches grasp dim sky.
Late light bleaches color
From the clouds.
I breathe in hope;
Night falls anyways.
Last light bleaches clouds
The color of bright knowledge.
I sit among them
On a rooftop, waiting. Birds
Fly by. Somewhere, people die.
Two interesting and different approaches to the same idea, Leah. At first I thought I liked the second one better, then I re-read the first and thought I liked it better….